NEWSFLASH!! ~Dee had an amazing perfformance at City Winery, NYC on Aprill 11th, 2010. A double bill with renowned Performance Artist Penny Arcade - you don't want to miss this. More info and details on our Gigs/Events page.
Singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, quantum searcher, envisioner, manifester, traveler.
Dee was raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY in a super music biz environment. Her mother, Billie Rogers (Archer) was the only woman to play trumpet in the era of the Big Name American Dance Band, with the Woody Herman Orchestra - in the 1940's. Billie is still alive and as sharp as ever today. Now in her early 90's, she's been known to pick up the trumpet and play a tune from the recliner in her livingroom - but always with a mute on her horn, so she doesn't disturb the neighbors.
Dee's father - Jack Archer - met Dee's mom while he was managing the Woody Herman Orchestra in the '40's. After a stint as a music agent for the William Morris Agency, he began representing many of the prominent early greats of Rock 'n' Roll and jazz - while he was VP/co-founding Agent at the now-legendary "Shaw Artists Agency" in the 1950's in NYC (as depicted in the movie "Ray").
Jack represented Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Clyde McPhatter, Laverne Baker, The Drifters, The Platters, Frankie Lymon, Little Richard, Little Anthony, Dinah Washington, Moms Mabley, Big Joe Turner and many, many more legends of Blues and Rock 'n' Roll. So Dee grew up hanging out with many of these (and other) great artists back stage at the Apollo, at her father's NYC offices, at their Hastings home, and at other venues her father booked.
Earlier and later, her dad also handled jazz legends Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, Maynard Ferguson, famed dancer Bill Robinson (and many more), mostly while working as VP/Agent under President Joe Glaser at Associated Booking Corp in NYC in the late 50's-early 60's. Jack passed away in 1962.
After Dee started piano lessons at 5, songwriting at 7, and studied acting under the great Helen Menken at New York City's "American Theatre Wing" while still in elementary school, Dee spent her Barrington, IL Junior High and Oceanside, CA High School years experimenting with various creative musical categories - performing in Broadway musical theatre reviews over the summers, rockin' away at Military Base clubs with various high school rock bands during the school year, and rehearsing/performing many weekends as a member of the nationally acclaimed all-teen vocal group, the "Young Americans". During the time Dee was a member of the YA's, they performed the Academy-nominated song "Born Free" at the Academy Awards and performed on many other major network television shows, including the then-popular show "Hollywood Palace".
But inevitably, Dee's heart was in her R&B/Rock 'n' Roll roots - and she established her own pop-rock path, starting with her first post-high school band, the "The Road Home". "The Road Home" quickly became Orange County California's most popular club band, and played to Standing Room Only audiences at the large Newport Beach Club called "Isadores" and Marina del Rey's "The Basement" - 5 nights a week for almost two years - before the band was signed to ABC/Dunhill Records, and released their first album "Peaceful Children" on the label, produced by the famous pop/soul songwriting team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter in 1971.
After recording and touring up and down the west coast for many years, initially with "The Road Home" and later with her own bands, Dee settled in Los Angeles where she spent the late 70's and early 1980 packing local original artist venues - including the Troubador, Palamino and most notably, for several years, the now legendary Bla Bla Cafe in Studio City.
In mid-1980 Dee moved from LA to New York and continued to perform her original music at major NYC original music clubs including Trax, The Ritz, The Bitter End and The Bottom Line while also regularly headlining at Kenny's Castaways on Bleeker St., and running the famous Kenny's Castaways Bleeker Street All-Pro Sunday "Midnight Jam/Open Mike" for almost two years. She also continued touring up and down the East Coast, as well as back in LA whenever she could get there. With the Dee Archer Band opening on tour, in the early 80's, for Steve Stills, B.B. King, Joe Cocker and more (and Dee adding background vocals to Rod Stewart's "Foolish Behavior" album in 1980), during this period she caught the attention of famed label A&R executive John Kalodner, who supported Dee with a year-long Artist Development deal at his home label, the newly formed Geffen Records. Although that deal never fruited in an album on the Geffen label, Dee continued to rock make great music in NY and LA through the first half of the 80's.
Additionally several of her own songs were used in popular nationally released teen-oriented films in those years ("Paradise Motel"; "Goin' All The Way"). And, in a major HBO Made-for-TV re-make of the movie "Svengali" starring Jodie Foster and Peter O'Toole, Dee shared the screen in a one-on-one scene with Ms. Foster, as a "street-singer" - performing her own song, written for the film ("Livin' In The Land of Make Believe").
Beyond the artists mentioned above, through the years Dee has had good times playing with, singing backgrounds for – and/or opening for or working with – many of her artistic heroes and friends, including: Smithereens, Sandra Bernhardt, Carl Anderson, Billy Vera, Jeff Golub, Jack Sonni, Bill Medley, Bobby Redfield, Art Munson, Tony Sarno, Dave Perkins, Craig Krampf, Kevin Jenkins, Atticus Finch, John Harden, Jimmy Hunter, Lou Castro, Janis Liebhart, Jon McCurry, Dana Thomas, Billy Sprouse, Pete Wickersham, Jimmy Sims and many, many more...
While Dee has never stopped making music and writing, she left the biz, professionally, for almost 15 years (from '84-98) as she became a highly successful executive and entrepreneur in the wireless/cellular industry - and raised her then-young son, Cody Allen, who was born in 1988.
In '98, after a successful public offering of one of her software companies, Dee's re-formed version of the Dee Archer Band (with many of the original Dee Archer Band members from the "Geffen-era" NYC days) landed another record deal on a division of Icehouse (Marconi Records), and recorded two rockin' CDs produced by Craig Krampf (drummer, co-producer, Melissa Ethridge) and Tony Sarno - and the band did some national touring in support of these releases. But with a son still in his early teens (who by then had a fast-rising career of his own, as a successful action sports filmmaker with DVDs releases in stores worldwide) - Dee once again "retired" from the music biz and happliy played mom and "manager" to her son for another several years.
Still diligently focused on the last of her major software
companies, Dee also makes time to record and perform, with a new
CD release and a few key performances on the one coast or the other
every year. She is releasing her first "unplugged" solo
CD in March '10 ("Cafe Del Soul "), and this year two of
her original songs will be featured in a worldwide re-release of
the movie "Paradise Motel" (starring Gary Hershberger, "Six
Feet Under"). With her renowned soulful high energy and the
desire to rock on, the best is yet to come.
To Contact Dee:
dee@deearcher.com
